I wonder if Fisher understands his claim has the potential to hurt the sales of his new car line? If I were in the market and wanted to consider his new model common sense dictates I wait a couple of years for reviews of the new line. At that point I might wait a few years to buy his new super electro.

That is, the possible cost is around $400,000 for the battery pack alone.

Why don't we see what the truck costs, and THEN praise or damn it? Since it won't be produced until 2019, it will be a couple years before we know, most likely.

Meantime, the article cites an estimate for a 600 mile range. Is this a typo, or trying to "enhance" the bear case? Given how "accurate" both the bulls and the bears tend to be when hyping or damning Tesla -- this is why I say we need to wait for the price.

I have no doubt it will be higher, perhaps significantly higher than a regular semi. But if it's cheaper to run and will last far longer, it may be well worth the price. Then, as battery prices come down, it's all advantage Tesla.

This, of course, only works if they survive to 2020 and beyond which, IMO, is far from certain the way they bleed cash and demand lots of additional capital raises.

Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.

Outcast_Searcher wrote:Why don't we see what the truck costs, and THEN praise or damn it? Since it won't be produced until 2019, it will be a couple years before we know, most likely.

Meantime, the article cites an estimate for a 600 mile range. Is this a typo, or trying to "enhance" the bear case? Given how "accurate" both the bulls and the bears tend to be when hyping or damning Tesla -- this is why I say we need to wait for the price.

I have no doubt it will be higher, perhaps significantly higher than a regular semi. But if it's cheaper to run and will last far longer, it may be well worth the price. Then, as battery prices come down, it's all advantage Tesla.

This, of course, only works if they survive to 2020 and beyond which, IMO, is far from certain the way they bleed cash and demand lots of additional capital raises.

Last night my Powerwall went off-line twice for 30 mins each time. It fails over to the grid so I didn't notice. I saw it this morning and wondered, I figured they downloaded and installed an update...

Today I get home and look and the charge curve has changed dramatically. It is now charging at a constant 5 kW rate again. This has happened twice since I've had it. The charge curve has changed on it's own.

We talk about battery swaps and professionals who are responsible for maintaining an EV battery...My battery is being maintained over the Internet by professionals without me even knowing.

If it wasn't for my level of data analysis I would never have known. The battery is now charging much faster than before.

Screen Shot 2017-11-20.jpg

There's no scale on that plot so it's hard to tell what's going on. Doesn't look like 'constant' to me. Looks like my typical charging curve on a clear day, except for the chunk out of midday (?). Please clarify.

Blessed are the Meek, for they shall inherit nothing but their Souls. - Anonymous Ghung Person

The University of Waterloo researchers breakthrough involves the use of negative electrodes (the anode) made of lithium metal, a material with the potential to dramatically increase battery storage capacity. The increased storage capacity, or energy density, could boost the distance electric vehicles are able to travel on a single charge, from about 200 kilometers to 600 kilometers (360 miles). The team’s research paper has been published in the journal Joule.

In creating the technology, Pang and fellow researchers, including supervisor Linda Nazar, a professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at Waterloo, had to overcome two challenges. The first challenge involved the well-known risk of fires and explosions caused by microscopic structural changes to the lithium metal during repeated charge-discharge cycles. The second involved a reaction that creates corrosion and limits both how well the electrodes work and how long they last.

Researchers solved both problems by adding a chemical compound made of phosphorus and sulfur elements to the electrolyte liquid that carries electrical charge within batteries. The compound reacts with the lithium metal electrode in an already assembled battery to spontaneously coat it with an extremely thin protective layer. We wanted a simple, scalable way to protect the lithium metal. With this solution, we just add the compound and it works by itself.”

The team’s work is truly a counter intuitive success. Its seems after a review of the paper that the technology may be incorporated into battery manufacturing without a complete retooling and massive investment. This may be the breakthrough that more intense use of battery power needs to expand the market for devices.

It's a long road going from laboratory prototype to commercial production. Failure awaits at many steps along the way. It is the exception rather than the rule when a product actually overcomes all these hurdles and makes it into commercial production. However reporting on a new revolutionary breakthrough is hardly "babbling". Likewise shitting over every breakthrough because it has a small chance of making it to commercial production is not constructive. Some of us like to read about new breakthroughs being made even if they may never make it into a commercial product. If you don't, no need to read the thread. But don't come in here just to shit all over the thread.

The reason why PStarr's attitude is annoying is that if everyone felt as he did then nobody would ever get out of bed in the morning because all endeavors of humanity are doomed to fail.

It's like what JFK said when he touched off the space race "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard".

The mindset of the doomer is, at heart, fatalism. Even an appropriate tech guy like Greer would tell you that the world will need, at the very least, MacGyver types who can think outside of the box. What the world won't need are naysayers who just heckle those who are rolling their sleeves up and working the damn problem.

If we're doomed, we're doomed, but until we get there, let human innovation play its cards without kicking sand in their face at every step.

More Ripleys, fewer Hudsons.

HALL OF SHAME:-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.

I saw this Youtube video on Don Sadoways battery prototype at MIT. It didn't go into any real technical detail on the design. Does anyone have any info on this? If this was discussed already sorry I didn't read back through the whole thread

Hi guys,while we're discussing the cost of electric batteries for trucks, has anyone seen Real Engineering crack the numbers? He makes an interesting case. It won't be the same as existing trucking business & shift models, but there does seem to be an economic case.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ8Cf0vWmxE

Dr James Hansen recommends breeder reactors that convert nuclear 'waste' into 1000 years of clean energy for America, and can charge all our light vehicles and generate "Blue Crude" for heavy vehicles.https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/recharge/

eclipse wrote:Hi guys,while we're discussing the cost of electric batteries for trucks, has anyone seen Real Engineering crack the numbers? He makes an interesting case. It won't be the same as existing trucking business & shift models, but there does seem to be an economic case.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ8Cf0vWmxE

Interesting, and thanks for posting it.

It's not clear to me whether this would be economic, given the author's assumptions.

For the 500 mile version, given that the battery would be 8 tons or more in weight and cost $180,000 dollars, using current technology.

Given the total payload might be in the area of 20+ tons (assuming a similar truck weight without the battery to a diesel truck), that's a hell of a lot of payload (ballpark) to give up -- call it a third. Oh, and of course, add a couple of tons to the battery to allow for a range buffer for weather, hills, etc. that occur in real life, if you want the range to be reliable.

It seems to me that he implied that trucking company owners will need to decide if it's economic. He also said that we really need to know the weight of the empty electric Semi to figure that out, but Musk being Musk, didn't say a word about that. (Now, government subsidies for "clean trucking" could help, but SOMEONE has to pay the bill).

So to me it looks like this will be POTENTIALLY viable, depending on variables like battery efficiency, total truck weight, and cost of various things like electricity, maintenance, diesel, etc.

Meanwhile, we're approaching summer of 2019, and when Musk was recently asked about the timeline for the production of the Tesla Semi, he didn't respond (in typical Musk fashion, when his exaggerated timelines are pointed out). The Musk claim in 2017 when this was announced was for production in 2019. So I have real doubts about when and if this will become mainstream high volume production technology, at least from Tesla. (A few demo/testing trucks isn't really doing anything more than preparation for possible launch some day, or marketing for Tesla).

Probably all true, and as a New Urbanist I don't really like cars that much anyway. But can you imagine how fast the shift to electric trucking could be (even with current limitations) if oil prices start to rise, permanently? Even if there was a half hour fast-charge every 500 miles. Even if there's a third reduction in freight capacity. This is national infrastructure - even national security! Who knows? Maybe some company would smash together a hydrogen burning truck and manufacture hydrogen at their warehouses, after all all you need is electricity and water.

Dr James Hansen recommends breeder reactors that convert nuclear 'waste' into 1000 years of clean energy for America, and can charge all our light vehicles and generate "Blue Crude" for heavy vehicles.https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/recharge/

eclipse wrote:Probably all true, and as a New Urbanist I don't really like cars that much anyway. But can you imagine how fast the shift to electric trucking could be (even with current limitations) if oil prices start to rise, permanently? Even if there was a half hour fast-charge every 500 miles. Even if there's a third reduction in freight capacity. This is national infrastructure - even national security! Who knows? Maybe some company would smash together a hydrogen burning truck and manufacture hydrogen at their warehouses, after all all you need is electricity and water.

The collapse sites' strong point has never been focusing on reality or data points which contradict their "religion", IMO. "Strange", re their views and predictions, is pretty much par for the course.

First, no question that if oil prices rose a lot and stayed a lot higher that the economics on a lot of things would change -- and could produce massive change rapidly, given the incentives that would cause. if that had occurred a decade ago, HEV's would be fairly popular already, for example.

That's why so many people who recognize the dangers of AGW would welcome significant CO2 taxes, to bring that about, and incent far less fossil fuel burning. Not that this idea ever gets traction, even with switching income taxes to CO2 taxes, meaning total taxes wouldn't have to rise.

There's no reason hydrogen couldn't be produced lots of places. You're right -- just electricity and water can do it. However, to do it at scale takes a lot of power and that isn't cheap. It comes back to economics. Until fuel cells are CHEAP, the incentive to create a widely available and convenient public hydrogen supply doesn't exist. Until that happens, fuel cells are a non-starter (outside parts of CA where govt. provides more incentives than elsewhere in the US) since without convenient hydrogen, no economic fill-ups, and game over.

One thing though -- if the electricity to crack the water to produce the hydrogen isn't green (solar, wind, etc), i.e. if it's done with natural gas, then that's not any better than charging BEV's with electricity produced from natural gas (or worse, coal).

...

To me, as you say, this is all technically viable now. The remaining big item is for the tech. to get good enough to make things like fuel cells and BEV's truly as good or better than ICE's or HEV's in terms of economics. I think it's just a matter of time. There will be a transition period, even when the economics is clearly favoring green tech, since ICE's don't suddenly become worthless (despite bizarre Musk claims), though their resale value could diminish significantly.

But I think it's really exciting that now, instead of just greatly reducing economic activity, we can respond to long term "high" oil prices with using smarter, greener tech.

Of course, the doomers will object that since it's not all economic today, it "can't happen", it "won't work", etc. No one rational ever claimed a major transition like changing the bulk of the global vehicle fleet could happen over night. Huge physical and economic constraints must be dealt with to mostly transition such a huge fleet of vehicles.

Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.